How to Stop Caring What Other People Think

The invisible prison that's controlling your every reaction

Here's something that will make you question everything you think you know about your own mind: Most of your daily decisions aren't actually yours.

Sorry… we are more programed than you can imagine.

You think you choose your clothes based on personal preference? You're actually terrified of being judged as unfashionable, unprofessional, or inappropriate. This is programmed into you.

You believe you carefully consider your words in conversations? Wrong. Most people sound very similar. You're unconsciously self-censoring to avoid social punishment.

You assume your political opinions are thoughtfully formed? They're often calculated to keep you safely within your tribe's acceptable boundaries. Most of your "beliefs" are curated by a sophisticated propaganda machine designed to keep you arguing about predetermined talking points while never questioning the system itself.

The fear of judgment has become the ultimate weapon of mass control—more effective than armies, more powerful than propaganda, more totalitarian than any government could ever dream of being. Because this prison doesn't require guards. The inmates police themselves.

We witnessed this psychological operation play out in real time during the COVID pandemic. Forget the science, forget the data, forget your actual beliefs about masks or social distancing. What really controlled your behavior? The crushing fear of being judged as selfish, reckless, or dangerous to the collective. The terror of social ostracism if you didn't perform the right rituals of compliance. The panic at the thought of being labeled a "conspiracy theorist" for asking basic questions. The fear of contaminated grandma or grandpa.

Millions of people violated their own values, suppressed their own doubts, and performed behaviors they didn't actually believe in—not because they were convinced by evidence, but because they were paralyzed by the fear of judgment. They would rather breathe through cloth for two years than face the social consequences of independent thinking.

The fear of judgment isn't just ruining your mental health—it's literally destroying your body, fragmenting your soul, and severing your connection to the divine creative force that flows through all existence.

The most insidious part of this psychological operation? It's become completely automatic. You're no longer consciously choosing to care what others think—you're unconsciously programmed to seek approval, avoid disapproval, and maintain your position in the group at all costs.

You've become an automaton, following invisible rules you never consciously agreed to, making decisions based on algorithms of acceptability running in the background of your mind. The profound consequences of this programming are staggering: You live in a perpetual state of low-grade anxiety, chronic discomfort, and spiritual disconnection because your primary operating system is designed around one devastating question: "What will they think?"

This constant need to remain safely within the acceptable boundaries has severed you from your most authentic self. You've traded your divine nature for group membership, your soul's truth for social safety, your creative power for the illusion of belonging.

But here's what they never counted on: You can wake up. You can notice what's become automatic. You can choose consciousness over conditioning. You can reclaim your sovereignty from the invisible forces that have been running your life.

The journey from fear to authentic freedom begins with a single, revolutionary act: Paying attention to how thoroughly you've been programmed to betray yourself.

The Prison I Built for Myself

For over a decade, I performed the role of the "professional psychologist" with Academy Award precision. I spoke in carefully measured tones. I used sanitized clinical language. I expressed only the safe, approved opinions that wouldn't threaten my reputation, my practice, or my standing in the mental health community. Looking back, I realize I was simply following my conditioning—doing exactly what graduate school trained me to do: survive by conforming, succeed by not rocking the boat.

But inside my head, a completely different conversation was happening.

My authentic self—the one who questioned everything about my field—was running a constant internal commentary that I never dared speak aloud. This voice saw through the surface of what clients presented and recognized the deeper spiritual crisis underneath their symptoms. It wanted to challenge people's victim narratives instead of validating their helplessness. It burned to tell hard truths that could actually transform lives rather than just make people feel temporarily better.

This authentic voice had perspectives that would make my colleagues squirm. It asked questions that could get me labeled as "difficult" or "unprofessional." It wanted to call people forward into their power rather than enable their comfortable victimhood. The few times I let this voice slip out, I watched people physically recoil from the truth it carried.

So I silenced it. For years.

I performed professionalism while my soul screamed for truth. I spoke in committee-approved language while my heart burned with authentic expression. I built a successful practice while slowly dying inside from the constant performance.

Until COVID woke me up and I made the decision that changed everything: I wanted to feel free more than I wanted to feel safe.

Watching the pandemic unfold, I saw with crystal clarity how the power of conformity could create devastating harm. I watched colleagues, friends, and entire institutions abandon their principles, silence their doubts, and enforce compliance—not because the science was clear, but because the social pressure was unbearable. I witnessed intelligent people violate their own values rather than risk being labeled "selfish" or "anti-science."

It lit a fire in me. I was angry—at the system, at the cowardice, at myself for participating in this charade for so long. I realized how quickly our freedoms could be stripped away, how easily fear could turn people into willing prisoners of their own making. Life was shorter than I'd ever imagined, and I was wasting what little time I had left seeking approval from a world that had lost its mind.

I didn't care anymore about being professional, acceptable, or safe. I cared about being real.

That's when "Radically Genuine" was born. First as a Twitter account where I dared to express what I actually thought about healing and human potential. Then as a podcast where I could speak my truth without institutional filters. Finally as this Substack where I could write from my soul instead of my professional persona.

Now, sitting across from clients every day, I see this same pattern playing out in almost every single person who walks into my office. Regardless of their background, their symptoms, or what brought them to therapy, there's always the same underlying current: the fear of judgment has consumed their authentic self.

They come in with depression, anxiety, relationship problems, or chronic physical ailments. But beneath every presenting issue, I discover the same energetic poison: a constant internal dialogue of evaluation and criticism. Their minds have become courtrooms where they're simultaneously the defendant, prosecutor, and judge—endlessly trying themselves for the crime of being human.

"What will they think if I..."

"I can't do that because people might..."

"I should be more..."

"I'm not enough because..."

These running narratives of judgment have become so automatic, so deeply embedded in their consciousness, that they mistake this mental tyranny for normal thinking. They've been evaluating themselves through imagined external eyes for so long that they've completely lost touch with their own inner knowing.

The loss of self is always the same story, told in different variations. They've spent so much energy managing their image, controlling others' perceptions, and avoiding disapproval that they no longer know who they actually are beneath the performance. They've become strangers to themselves—familiar with their masks but disconnected from their essence.

This isn't just psychological suffering—it's energetic warfare against their own soul. The constant self-monitoring, the perpetual anxiety about others' opinions, the chronic tension of maintaining acceptable personas—all of this creates the perfect storm for mental anguish and physical disease. Their bodies are literally breaking down under the weight of living in opposition to their own truth.

Every symptom they present is their soul's desperate attempt to get their attention, to call them back to authenticity, to remind them that they're dying from the inside out while trying to be someone they're not.You're energetically imprisoned by a fear so pervasive, so culturally normalized, that you've mistaken it for reality itself.

The Energetic Poison Destroying Your Temple

Here's what is left out of mainstream health conversations: Your body is the physical manifestation of your spiritual state.

Yeah I said it. You are more than a body. I know this won't sit well with the medical establishment that desperately needs to reduce your divine nature to some biological malfunction they can “treat”. Last decade it was serotonin deficiency. This decade it's mitochondrial dysfunction.

When you live in perpetual low level state of fear, you're not just experiencing psychological discomfort—you're literally poisoning the sacred vessel that houses your soul.

The research in psychoneuroimmunology has been screaming this truth for decades, but the pharmaceutical industry has buried it under an avalanche of pills and pathology. Chronic fear doesn't just feel bad—it systematically destroys your immune system, elevates inflammatory markers, disrupts hormonal balance, and creates the perfect biological breeding ground for autoimmune disorders, cancer, heart disease, and every form of suffering your body can manifest.

But here's what the research can't measure: the spiritual carnage.

You are not a body that happens to have consciousness. You are consciousness—divine, eternal, creative energy—temporarily animating a physical form.

Fear is energy that has become contracted, twisted, and turned against itself. When you live in automatic fear of others' opinions (even it its unconscious), you're broadcasting a frequency of separation, limitation, and self-attack that literally rewrites your DNA, reshapes your neural pathways, and severs your connection to the infinite creative power flowing through all existence.

Consider the energetic devastation of living consumed by fear of judgment: Your attention—your most precious resource, your very life force—becomes trapped in endless mental loops of evaluation and criticism. Instead of flowing freely toward creation, love, and expansion, your energy contracts into defensive patterns of self-protection and people-pleasing. You sacrifice the effortless flow of authentic being for the exhausting performance of acceptable existence.

When I'm out in public, I've become a student of human behavior—watching conversations unfold like scripted performances. I observe the predictable responses, the carefully modulated voices, the invisible barriers people maintain even in casual interactions. You can feel the separation, the energetic distance created by fear. Most people aren't really connecting; they're managing impressions, calculating responses, performing their acceptable selves while their authentic selves remain locked away. But occasionally—rarely—you witness something beautiful: two people genuinely at ease, speaking their truth without agenda, present and unafraid. The contrast is striking. In those moments, you remember what real human connection looks like when fear isn't running the show

This energetic contraction doesn't just damage your spirit—it becomes encoded in your cells. Your body, that magnificent intelligence, faithfully reflects your internal state. Chronic fear creates chronic inflammation. Spiritual disconnection can manifest as immune dysfunction. The constant betrayal of your authentic self creates an internal war that often shows up in the body—not as the sole cause of illness, but as a significant contributing factor that mainstream medicine rarely acknowledges. When you're energetically attacking yourself through self-judgment and inauthenticity, your body's wisdom responds to this internal conflict.

From Fear to Love

Here's something that will shatter your understanding of human interaction: People can feel your authenticity—or lack thereof—regardless of how perfectly you perform.

We are energetic beings communicating far beyond the limitations of words, facial expressions, or body language. There's an invisible field of information constantly radiating from your consciousness that others pick up on unconsciously. When you're operating from fear, trying to manage their perception of you, desperately performing to gain approval—they feel that desperation even if they can't articulate what they're sensing.

Inauthenticity has an energetic signature. It feels heavy, contracted, needy. People unconsciously recoil from it because it's the frequency of separation and manipulation, even when consciously intended as kindness or professionalism.

I learned this lesson the hard way in my practice.

No matter how skilled I became at clinical techniques, no matter how perfectly I performed the role of "professional therapist," my clients could absolutely sense my energetic state. If I walked into a session carrying stress from my day, rushing from appointment to appointment, operating from ego or agenda rather than genuine care—they felt it immediately. The session would be flat, disconnected, therapeutically impotent.

That's when I discovered something that transformed not just my practice, but my entire understanding of human interaction: The quality of my presence determined the quality of their healing.

I began a ritual before each session. I would stop everything, close my eyes, and consciously shift my energy through mindful breathing and prayer. I'd set the clear intention of raising my vibration to one of pure healing energy—moving from whatever frequency I'd been operating from into a state of love, presence, and divine service. I'd ask to be a clear channel for whatever healing needed to happen, releasing any agenda about outcomes or performance.

The difference was immediate and undeniable. When I showed up in this aligned state, my clients would visibly relax. They'd go deeper faster. Breakthroughs happened effortlessly. The healing wasn't coming from my techniques or expertise—it was flowing through the energetic field created by authentic, loving presence.

But here's the kicker: whenever I got too busy, too arrogant, or too rushed to remember this practice, I paid the price immediately. Sessions felt forced. Clients seemed guarded. Nothing clicked. They could sense that I was operating from my small self rather than my divine self, and their nervous systems responded accordingly.

This taught me the fundamental truth about all human interaction: Love is not an emotion—it's an energetic frequency. And people can feel whether you're broadcasting love or fear, regardless of what words come out of your mouth.

The Practical Path: From Fear to Freedom

Enough theory. Here's how you actually make this transformation from fear of judgment to authentic presence.